Rijeka's cathedral is unlike most churches in Croatia: it is round. The rotunda was built in 1683 on the site of an earlier Romanesque church dedicated to the city's patron saint, St. Vitus, and its circular form — based on the Santa Maria della Salute in Venice — was an unusual choice for the region. The interior is spare but has a fine set of Baroque choir stalls and a Gothic crucifix, the Volto Santo, that is the object of particular local veneration.
The cathedral sits in the heart of the old town, a few minutes' walk from the Korzo. It is small enough to feel intimate rather than grand, and the exterior's smooth white drum looks slightly out of place among the Austro-Hungarian buildings that surround it — which is precisely what makes it worth finding.